Hawklan nodded. ‘What about the device in the hilt? Did you recognize it?’ he asked.
Isloman told him of the old book and its obscure references to times long gone. At the names Theowart, Sphaeera, Enartion and Ethriss, Hawklan seemed to hear again the distant note he had heard when he first handled the sword, but it slipped from him just as before.
He looked at his two friends, dominating the room with their massive presence. They were looking at him strangely although patently trying not to. Tirilen too, had an uncertainty about her as she stood back to examine her handiwork.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. Both the men seemed to start a little at the question.
‘Oh nothing. You just look different in your travel-ling clothes,’ said Loman with a slightly nervous smile. Hawklan knew they were keeping something from him, but he did not press them. They would not deceive him in any serious matter. He probably looked rather foolish in the clothes that Tirilen had found for him and they were too embarrassed to tell him. That would be typical of them.
But it was not that. Quite the contrary. Hawklan wore the clothes and the sword as if they were a natural part of him. The brothers saw before them the man they knew as a healer: a gentle, slightly innocent man, full of stillness and light. But his healer’s cowled robe had been laid aside and, standing armed, breeched, and booted, in a metal-buckled jerkin and with a long hooded cloak over his shoulders, the whole in black, his bearing was purely that of a warrior and leader. A warrior and a leader the like of which could be seen in the thick of battle in many of the carvings that filled the Castle.
Before he left, Hawklan asked Loman and Isloman to teach him some basic sword skills, but, strangely, they both refused.
‘If I try to use it I’ll probably cut my foot off… or worse,’ he protested jokingly. ‘I’ve never handled a sword in my life.’
But the two men did not respond to his levity. They shook their heads. ‘That sword’s far beyond our understanding, Hawklan,’ said Isloman soberly, almost reverently. ‘We can only learn from it, not teach.’ Then, as if reluctant to deny a friend such help, ‘But I doubt you’ll be able to draw it in an ill cause. You must do as we must. Learn from it. Trust its judgement. It sought you out, not you it. Have faith in it.’
Chapter 7
Hawklan was gone. Off on his strange pilgrimage to the Gretmearc. It thus fell to Tirilen to repair her uncle.
Isloman had spent the whole day in a towering fury-his hand gashed by his new chisel and, worse, far worse, his precious, long sought rock tortured by the rending scar the chisel had made when it slipped from his hand.
‘Months this rock and I have searched for one an-other,’ he fumed, as Tirilen treated and bound up his bleeding hand. ‘And for this to happen. To me of all people.’ He leaned forward and put his head in his hands in distress.
Tirilen had been businesslike in treating the hand, although the cut had an unpleasant quality about it, but she was at a loss to contend with this uncharacteristic outburst, following as it did his equally uncharacteristic rage. After a moment, she put her arms around him hesitantly and held him almost as if he had been a hurt child. Eventually he sat up and looked at her.
Putting his large hand against her cheek, he said quietly, ‘You’re very like your mother, Tirilen. In many ways. I’m sorry I’ve been such an old woman. I shouldn’t have burdened you with my carelessness and its consequences.’
‘Don’t be silly, uncle,’ she replied. ‘It was an ugly cut. You couldn’t have left it.’ She frowned a little. ‘That tinker was like a bad wind. He threw dust in our eyes, and whatever he was, we couldn’t see him for it. I’ve set aside the pendant I bought from him. Look what it did.’
She lifted up her chin and showed him a small but angry red mark where the pendant had rested against her. ‘And it was so pretty when I bought it.’
Isloman scowled and clenched his fists menacingly. Tirilen became businesslike again.
‘Where’s the chisel now?’ she asked before he could speak.
He answered a little shamefacedly. ‘I… threw it away when… ’ He indicated his damaged hand. Tirilen stopped winding up a bandage and looked at him, her face a mixture of concern and surprise. Nothing was ever ‘thrown away’ in Orthlund. Everything had its use and its time, its place in the Great Harmony.
‘Threw it away?’ she echoed in a tone of disbelief.
‘Yes. I’m afraid so,’ Isloman replied, looking even more shamefaced. Tirilen laid the bandage neatly in its place in her box, and took his hand.
‘You must go and find it, uncle,’ she said firmly. ‘Straight away. Who knows what harm it might do left lying idly?’
‘You’re right,’ he said. Then looking at his bandaged hand he nodded and, standing up, gave her a kiss on the forehead. ‘You’ve done a fine job on this,’ he said briskly. ‘Hawklan would be pleased with you.’
‘You were very lucky,’ she replied. ‘It came very close to doing you an injury that even Hawklan would have found difficult to mend. You could have been crippled for life. Now go and find that chisel right away.’
Isloman pursed his lips regretfully. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be young to be foolish, do you?’
As he was leaving, Tirilen spoke again.
‘Uncle. You can’t work properly today. Both your hand and your heart are too hurt. Go round the village and see what other harm has been done by this tinker’s wares.’
Isloman, his huge frame filling the doorway, looked at her steadily. She was so different now from the boisterous child she had been. More and more she’s growing like her mother, he thought, and an old hurt throbbed briefly.
His tour of the village turned into a dark pilgrimage of his own as he wended his way round the clean sunlit streets and sharp-edged houses. People came out and, without speaking, gave him things they had bought and now rejected. In the end it was four or five of them, heavily laden, who left the tinker’s wares in a pile outside the leaving stone of the village, marking it with the ancient sign for ‘Unclean’ as a warning to passers-by.
Doubtfully, Tirilen laid words on it to protect any plants and animals that might light on it. She wished Hawklan were here. She did not have this kind of skill.
Isloman looked down at the tools, fabrics and jewel-lery, even toys, and shook his head sadly.
‘Is this all we can do with them, Isloman?’ asked Ireck, his friend and an Elder of the Guild. Isloman did not answer.
‘What else can we do,’ said Otaff, another Elder of the Guild. ‘They’re tainted in ways we cannot read. Who can say what blinded us into accepting them. Perhaps when Hawklan returns he’ll know what to do. For now we must hope that the signs and Tirilen’s words protect the unwary and the innocent.’
He looked sadly at the pile. ‘This must remain here. Outside the village. To mark our shame.’
No one dissented from this unhappy conclusion, and the group dispersed slowly without any leave-taking.
Tirilen sat on a wide ledge in a room high in the castle, staring out across the countryside. Her blonde hair hung loose, shining in the bright spring sunshine. She pressed her nose against the window.
‘What’s happening, Gavor?’ she said to the raven, currently examining some fruit in a bowl on the table. He walked across to her purposefully and then flitted up on to her shoulder and peered earnestly in the direction she was looking.
‘You’re steaming up the window, dear girl, that’s what’s happening,’ he said after a moment. Tirilen glowered sideways at him.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
An insect collided drowsily with the window and lurched off into the clear air erratically. Tirilen curled up her knees and, wrapping her arms around her legs, rested her head on them.
‘Steady, dear girl,’ said Gavor, tottering at this unex-pected manoeuvre. ‘I’m used to a bigger perch than this you know.’